GOPRO: BE A HERO

GoPro, Inc., formerly the Woodman Labs, Inc, is an American Corporation that develops high definition cameras, used in extreme-action videography, for the rollicking market niche.

Dawning of an epochal idea

GoPro was founded by Nick Woodman in 2002, after combating with the difficulty to capture some quality action pictures of his surfing, because apparently the amateur photographers could not get close enough and being an ordinary man, he could not have purchased quality equipment to get his pictures shot at different, rather difficult to approach angles. Hence, born a desire to manufacture a camera system that could capture the professional angles and which is also why the company was named GoPro.

The nascent stage of the company

Nick Woodman, initially, raised money for his company by selling bead and shell belts on his van. Consequently, he developed the idea of a better film strap for cameras, as the common film straps on the market weren’t durable. Flexibility was indispensable for the camera which was built for the purpose of capturing some of the world’s most reckless and boisterous activities like sky diving, water rafting, surfing, etc.

He also received a substantial amount of 230,000 USD from his parents, which acted as a fillip for the billion dollar idea realization.

A series of setbacks but no giving up

Rome was not built in a day, well; even Woodman battled with a couple of failures but came out strong. The young entrepreneur built and destroyed two companies before coming to the idea of GoPro.

Burgeoning profits

In 2004, only after two years post the company’s launch, GoPro closed with 150,000 in revenue and there was no looking back since then. The company has been able to double the profit every year since then. The company crossed the billion dollars benchmark and has grown to be worth over 2.5 billion dollar, and has successfully transitioned from its early reliance on film and digital recording, which is acknowledged as a major herculean factor contributing to the company’s success.

GoPro’s Initial Public Offering

On June 25, 2014 GoPro went public and sold 17.8 million shares to initial investors at 24 USD per share, totaling a staggeringly large sum of 427.2 million USD.

Products

HERO cameras- the first GoPro camera i.e. GoPro 35mm Hero, was launched on September 2004. And in the first year alone, it sold 150,000 USD worth of the product. Gradually, as the technology kept advancing, so did the GoPro cameras. The Digital HERO 1 was released in 2006 and an even advanced version i.e. GoPro Digital HERO 3 was launched in 2007 which was rated up to 30 metres in depth.

The most recent of its products includes the GoPro HERO+ LCD, which provides video recording at 1080p at 60fps/ and 8-megapixel photos.

Product announcements

As of June 2015, a combination of 6 cameras can be oriented as the sides of a cube to create a 360 degrees panoramic video.

A quadcopter drone with a camera was launched in the first half of 2016.